For our final study task, we have to put together a press pack of our film, which includes, a poster, four stills, a synopsis and a bio of the people involved within the project.
Synopsis
Poster
Overall, I am pleased with the press pack that I have, however I will update the stills and the poster once I have more completed shots of the film.
After the final crit the other week, I began to think about how I could possibly cut down my animation to include only the bits I need whilst keeping a clear story. As I was watching my animatic through, I found that there were a few shots that I could get rid of as they looked good, but weren't necessary for the story to make sense.
However, some of the shots were establishing shots, but were slightly ambitious and would require a lot of time to animate, so for these shots I made a note to change the angle of the camera rather than cutting it completely.
Although the changes I have made are very small, I feel that they will help when it comes to animating the remainder of my film. I also feel that I will have more opportunity to re-visit the animatic with guidance once the deadline is up to cut the story even further before end of year show.
This morning, Daniel emailed me to say that he had completed a very rough film score for my animation. Whilst he was cutting very fine, as I only had a few hours before handin, I was relieved to have something from him, as it meant that I could place it into my final submission to give the tutors an idea of where the score was heading and how it would sound.
Overall, I am pleased with the choices he has made for the score, however, I feel that some elements may need to be altered for timings and such, as I had to do a little editing. However, all in all it gives a clear idea of the music and I feel that it matches the tone and atmosphere of the story.
Although I'm not where I wanted to be at this stage in the project, I am happy with my progress and I am feeling confident that I will be able to get this finished for end of year show.
As part of the press pack, we had to make a trailer of our films. As I don't have enough coloured frames I have decided to keep my trailer just line work for the moment, as it will allow for a level of consistency, which will keep the visual clear and help an audience it understand what is happening.
Based on the research I did of other trailers I had seen at MAF and online, I decided to keep my trailer short, yet include clips that best described my story without giving the actual story away. Whilst this meant that my trailer is only a few small clips put together and is actually quite short, I feel that the overall outcome works really well and I very happy with what I have.
I found this task to be both easy yet frustrating. As I hadn't received anymore music from Daniel at this point, I was left to work with the rough he had provided me with in March. However, I feel that I have managed to cut and edit the short soundtrack to fit the needs of my trailer and I think that it works very nicely with the visuals and gives a good sense of the tone and atmosphere of the film.
As one of the tasks for this module is to have a promotion pack to go with my film I decided that it would be wise to do a little bit of research into how other people, both professionals and students have promoted their films. Having been to MAF last year, I decided that my research would focus around that, as I still had the programme and the animations were a huge point of inspiration for me.
I found that there was quite a difference in terms of feature film promotion and short film promotion. I found that with the Phantom Boy and The Red Turtle, there was a lot more content that they had to offer and that this content was consistent throughout all of their social media and promotional sites. However, for the short films I found it very difficult to find any poster material or screen shots at all.
Website for The Red Turtle
Poster
Red Turtle Poster
I also found that the synopsis for the films have been kept very short and precise as to not give away too much of the story but to draw you in, however, the synopsis for the Phantom Boy is considerably larger.
In terms of trailers, I found that the feature film trailers were a lot longer in size due to there being more content to choose from, however, the trailers for the short films varied in length based on the overall length of the film itself. The synopsis for the shorts films was also considerably smaller, usually only a few lines long. Despite this however, the trailers still manage to draw you in and give you a little peak at what the film is about despite being short. This has made me think about how I present my film n a trailer and to think carefully about what shots I show and how.
Now that I have almost a minute of animation complete, I decided that I needed a break from animating, as I was struggling to stay focused and moved onto to colouring, as I wanted to have a scene at least fully rendered for submission. It was also useful, as it gave me an idea of how the colours worked and an insight into how the overall film would look when complete.
I decided to colour the scene when she is in the cave, simply because there was less to colour and I was running out of time due to poor time management.
Coloured frame
I started with this clip, as I wanted to know how long it would take for me to colour a few seconds, and like a suspected it didn't take all that long. However, when I moved onto the second half of this scene, the process became a lot slower as I had a lot of different elements to colour, which resulted in me only getting half of the second clip completed.
Coloured frame
However, despite it only being a small amount coloured, I feel that the colours work quite well and I am pleased with how the character looks overall.
In order to get the colouring complete by end of year show, I will try to get more people involved, as the colouring takes quite a while and I will be working to a tight deadline.
Now that we have a week left before submission, James and are I decided to sit down together and put together the animation and the backgrounds to see how the two would work together and to figure out lighting and what needs to be done for post production.
As James did the backgrounds, he has taken the lead and has been compositing everything together. Although we have only a handful of complete scenes and fewer backgrounds it gives us a clear idea of what the remainder of the animation will look like and we are happy with the result.
In terms of lighting, we've yet to figure that out, as we have decided to leave the lighting until post production, but for now I am happy with what we have achieved and I feel as though we have made some good progress.
Although I have designed the main character myself, I found that I have been struggling with animating her because I have't been able to create my own turnarounds. Whilst I have the basic front, back and side views, I'm really struggling to get the inbetweens down. I'm not a character designer, so I have always struggled with areas like this despite the fact that I can draw. But I needed to find a solution regardless, as it was hindering my progress with the animation.
So I reached out to Katy, as I know that she focuses on character design and enjoys the process. I also figured that it would give me the time to work on something else whilst she created some turnarounds for me.
Katy's turnaround
As I was only struggling with the facial features and proportions, I asked Katy to focus on the head alone in order to keep her workload down as well.
I also decided to use this collaboration as an opportunity to get the other characters designed as well, as I knew that I would struggle there as well. Katy was more than happy to help and used it as a chance to boost her portfolio.
Katy's Plague Doctor turnarounds
I'm really pleased with what Katy has produced for me and I found them to be extremely useful for animating.
Earlier in the project I began to think about the titles for my film, as the branding of the film would play a large part in advertising and gaining interest. However, I have always struggled when it comes to title cards, as I never know which text to go fro, or whether I want to create my own hand-drawn text that I can animate.
So for a short while I was stumped. I did however finally settle on creating hand-drawn text, as this would allow me to have an animated title within my film, which I believed would fit in better than a static one, as the entire animation is hand drawn and has the same line quality.
With that in mind, I began to write the title of the film, which I had decided wold be Emily's Plague after a long discussion with Sylvia and other peers. I decided to set it up so that the title would sit above the character test I had done to make sure that the overall style of it would relate to the overall film.
Title tests
However, I wasn't feeling all that optimistic and just felt as though I was not quite hitting the mark, so I decided that I would continue to work on the animation and come back to the titles at a later date.
Returning to the titles after focusing on the animating really helped me to choose a font that I was happy with. I wanted to keep the lines simple and clear to match the quality of the line work within my film and to also make it easy to use it across my entire branding. In the end I chose a simple title that I feel fits in with the aesthetic of the film.
Final title design
I am happy with the titles at this point, however, if I feel the need to re-visit these at any stage, I think I will reach out to a graphic designer to help, as they will be more experienced and could design something unique for the film.
For the last few days, James and I have been working together to render the backgrounds for my animation. We decided that it would be wise to focus on the backgrounds that would be used in the bits I had animated to begin with, as it would make those clips a lot stronger.
As James was modelling them, I was creating simple colour sheets for him to shade them with. Although we tested them all, in the end we decided to go for the brown palette for the cave and the blue palette for the trees, as we felt that these worked best. Having said this however, I feel that the trees should have another colour for the start of the animation, to reflect the mood and tone of the story at that point, but I will have to re-visit this at a later date once I have completed what is necessary for submission.
From here James placed a toon-shader onto the assets and we discussed where the camera should be and how I wanted the lighting to look in the scene. I had also made a start on the sky paintings and created the sky plane for the scene in which the plague doctors are introduced, so we have an idea of what these will look like when placed into the final background.
Overall, we are happy with the backgrounds and they are ready to be slotted into the compositions of the animated shots.
After the crit last week I have decided that it would be wise to re-evaluate my work and set out a clear plan for the next week to ensure that I stay on track and only work on the areas that are essential for hand in.
For the backgrounds, James has got to work on placing all of the modeled elements he created earlier in the project into substantial worlds for me to work with and use for my backgrounds. In order to get these complete, I will need to create colour sheets for him to use and also crate sky planes, as Maya doesn't allow for us to use the AI sky with the toon-shader, therefore, we will bypass this problem by using sky planes I have drawn myself.
In terms of sound design, I have been in contact with Daniel and asked where he was in terms of progress from March, which was the last time I had received any work from him. However, he has neglected to work on this project for unknown reasons and has stated that he won't be able to get a final score completed until after my deadline. Although this is disappointing, as I would have liked to have a final score for hand in, as it will have a significant impact on my story because of how the music ties in with the main characters moods and emotions, it is out of my control and it will do me no good to fixate on this and worry. So I have asked that he work on it as soon as possible and get what he can to me by the 11th. Voice overs however, I can control and I have been adding in the relevant sound effects and voice overs as I have completed each scene, so my film won't be completely silent, however the majority of it will be sadly.
Animating is the most important element at this point, as I need to get as much done as I can before submission. However, because it will benefit my work more to have a section that is completely rendered, I feel that I may not be able to reach the 60 second mark if I want to have a 7-10 second clip of fully rendered animation. Having said this, I will try my best to get as close to 60 seconds as I possibly can and I will do this with the scenes suggested to me in the final crit.
I also need to put time aside to put together a press pack and focus on getting scenes complete in order to put together a short trailer and create a poster.
Last week marked the day of the final crit for extended practice. At this point in the project I wasn't anywhere near where I wanted to be animation wise, nor had I received any backgrounds from James at this point either, which I feel made me feel as though I hadn't have been as productive as I actually had.
Focusing on the elements I could control, I put together the animated sections I had done and added in a few placeholder foley sounds, to give everyone an idea of what sounds I wanted to use within my animatic. However, I didn't have a soundtrack, as Daniel hasn't produced anything for me at this point in time. Nonetheless, I put together what I had and explained to the class that I had a lot to do, but wanted to know which areas I should focus on for submission.
As my peers have seen my animatic a thousand times over there wasn't any feedback in terms of what I had, as it was apparent I had a lot to work on. However, they did help me pick out areas I should focus on rather than continuing to work in a linear fashion. As I have more than one character within my story, I was advised to animate the Plague Doctors and the Raven if I could manage it, as this will give me more diversity within my submission and showcase my skills as an animator in the most effective way possible. Not only this, but it will give an insight into the personality of the characters throughout the entire story. As a plus, this will also give me a variety of shots to choose from for my trailer.
Overall, I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed with my work flow and the progress I've managed to make or lack of, however, Annabeth reminded me that as someone with an interest in purely animating, I have done my job and that I should take the time to reflect on how and why I have been struggling so much and what I could do increase productivity in the next few weeks to ensure I get my film finished for end of year show.
During the Easter break I used the time as an opportunity to progress with the animating and get as much done as I could. With me being behind, I wanted to try and complete another 10 seconds, as I felt that this was achievable because animating was proving to be going a lot slower than anticipated.
At this point in the project, I felt that it would be wise to focus on the shots that I felt would showcase my skills as an animator and give me shots that I could use in my showreel, so I decided to focus on a shot that used perspective and would challenge my abilities as an animator.
However, although I knew this shot would be difficult, I found it to be a lot harder to create than expected. I really struggled with the perspective of this shot more than anything and I also struggled to get the proportions of the characters face right. This put me behind my personal schedule and I only managed to achieve 7 seconds rather than 10. However, this did make me realise that it may be a good idea to get some turn arounds of my character done so that I could use the sheets for reference in future. So I asked Katy and she kindly created a quick turn around my characters head, which made it slightly easier.
Katy's character turnaround
Although I've struggled with this scene I am still quite pleased with the outcome and I think that I have gained some strong line work to use in my showreel. Animating this scene has also given me an insight into how quickly I am working. Although I know I am capable of animating, I am working a lot slower than I usually would, so it may be beneficial for me to re-think my strategy and create a plan for submission to give me the best chance of getting as much completed as possible.
Yesterday marked my presentation screening of the work I had completed so far for this project. I was a little nervous about showcasing my work to the group, as I felt that I was behind the majority of people and had the least to show. I was also still wondering if my story was still confusing or not, as the last screening we had left me feeling a little unsure.
However, although I only had 8 seconds and a key framed shot, I feel that my screening went well and that I received some very useful constructive feedback.
The first point that was made is that I had to hold some of the frames for a little longer and allow time for these scenes to breath and for an audience to catch up with what they are watching. There are many places in my animatic where the shots seem to move too quickly from one to the next, and some of them were difficult for people to follow without the actual movement being there. I'm happy to hold shots for a longer period of time, as this won't necessarily require me to animate any more, but simple pause on a shot before moving on. Also, I'd like my story to be as clear as possible, so I will definitely add the time if I have to.
The second thing that got mentioned was the fact that my introduction was really confusing, and people didn't know what was happening at all and decided that the many cuts back and forth from one scene to another wasn't necessary. They suggested that it would work just as well to have the action start immediately as the credits were on screen, as this would still give an audience an idea of what happened before hand whilst being clear and simple. Not only this, but it cuts down on animating, which gives me more time to focus on the remainder of the work.
This is a change I've already made to my animatic since yesterday and I have altered the beginning of my animation. Although the introduction isn't any shorter in length, I have reduced the amount of animating needed, which has saved me at least a few days work. I've also mentioned this to Daniel and sent him a copy of the updated animatic.
On top of this, people also suggested to me that I focus on the key points of the story and get them animated first, so it makes sense with the animatic filling in the gaps, as it is unrealistic to believe that I will get this completely finished for submission. This is something I will take on board and try work out as I go along, as I'm not 100% certain which bits are key to an audiences understanding and which aren't.
Finally, I was told that I need to do a few background tests to make sure that my character fits in with the environments, and to do these as soon as possible. However, James is away for the next few weeks, so I will have to wait until he gets back. In the meantime I will think about colour palettes and continue to animate.
This week I have managed to complete another small section of animating that brings my total up to 8 seconds. Although this isn't where I particularly wanted to be at this stage, progress is progress and I feel as though I am slowly getting quicker at working, however, I am struggling a little, as I feel as though I have fallen behind massively.
Having said this, I plan on completing a few small and 'easy' sections in the next week, as I feel that this will help to boost my confidence and make me feel productive and like I am making good progress.
Not only have I managed to do this, but I have also received a music sample from Daniel and have been able to get an idea of where he wants to take the music and how he feels the score should sound. I have also started to think about Foley/ background sounds as well and began to add in the sounds for the storm scene, as I wanted to give Daniel a better idea of how the animation will start, as I not sure I want music to start until the titles show on screen.
Although I only have a sample of music, one which Daniel says will change quite a lot when he figures out timings and such, I feel that it suits my animation quite well and he has definitely listened to my ideas and what I want my film to be about and portray. I feel that he has a very good understanding of the tone and mood of the animation and how to create emotion within his music and I am really pleased with where he is taking this.
However, I do feel that the music is a little intense in places and I'm not 100% sure that I would want the music that loud. But this is something we can discuss when Daniel has worked on refining his ideas a little more.
Also, as mentioned before, I'm not 100% certain that I want music in the introduction of my animation, as the soundscape changes quite suddenly and rapidly from peaceful and calm to a thunderstorm and back. I have sent this copy to Daniel and I will see what he has to say about the changes I have suggested.
Overall, I am pleased with the initial ideas and all I need to focus on now is getting the animation done.
Last week I got in touch with Daniel to see if he had made on progress with music, as I was feeling slightly on edge because I hadn't heard anything work wise from him despite the fact that we have been in almost constant communication since January. I kindly reminded him that I have a deadline approaching and it would be great if I could have a sample of music or an idea of theme to discuss with my class mates and tutors.
Fortunately Daniel was very understanding and said that he would work on some initial ideas and themes and get them to me by the end of the week. With my mind settled I continued to animate and attempt to make more progress.
Last week marked quite a slow working week for me, as I spent the majority of the week learning how to create a walk cycle and then creating one.
Walk cycles are something that I have managed to miraculously avoid over the last 2 and a half years, yet has proved to be a bite in the bottom now that I have to animate so many of them in a short amount of time. However, they do make up the majority of my animation, so there is that as a plus!
Despite it being a slow week I am keeping my head above the water and getting on with work as quickly as I can in the hopes that I can get as much done as possible.
During our last milestone class, we each had the opportunity to show our animatics to our peers and get feedback on the overall story, timings and any progress we had made (if any) so far. It was also to see whether or not the story was clear and if there was any room for any bits to be potentially cut down or thought about differently.
The feedback I received was somewhat confusing. People seemed to be quite confused at first, yet when the story was described to them and things were explained, they understood the idea and where the story was going. Annabeth seemed pleased with my idea, however suggested that I get back with Sylvia and re-think the ending, as there seems to be no satisfying end to the story. However, I explained to Annabeth that the theme of the story was that the main character chooses not to do anything about it, but more just go home once she finds out that she must make a decision that seemed quite heavy and serious.
Once this was explained, everyone seemed on board and seemed to understand, with people saying it would make more sense if the storyboard panels were more detailed.
Feedback in terms of voice over was also given. With the atmosphere of the film being quite subtle, I felt that the voice recordings I had got didn't particularly match the overall feel of the animation, so I have decided not to add speech. However, this leave the whole question of how will people understand what is happening within the story and I have thought about the music being a huge aid in this and the characters expressions, alongside subtle expressive sounds and grunts from the character. Although some people suggested a voice over, I am not 100% sold on that idea, as I feel that it will detract from the overall story.
Having said this however, I am unsure if my story is okay or not to go ahead with, but Annabeth later said that there is nothing stopping me from taking this further into a number of small shorts that make a series, so I feel that my story is good to go.
With this in mind, I took the time to email Daniel (the musician for my film) and make sure that he was 100% sure of what the story was about and to answer any questions he might have had. He didn't seem to have any trouble understanding and he was happy with what I had sent him.
Overall, I feel that my animatic is fine for what I need it for and there are no problems with what I have done on Daniel's side either, so I don't think I am going to make any changes to it other than adding in my animated segments as I go and possibly altering shots/ timings if I feel that they are appropriate. Now that I have the green light, I am going to get on with the animating and hope that I can pick up the pace.
As I mentioned earlier in the project, I felt that the voice overs I had previously gained from my last session didn't quite fit with the overall tone of my animation and that I wanted to focus more on the subtle noises and completely cut the speech altogether. Whilst Emily had recorded some subtle noises, they weren't actually all that subtle, so I decided to ask a couple of my peers to re-record them for me, so that I had the sounds I wanted and they would fit the story better.
I asked Katy to voice Emily, as I felt that she would be able to make quite subtle noises with her being quiet to start with and I asked Max to voice the Plague Doctors, as he is a pro at making the most weird noises known to man.
Overall, I feel that I have a collection of voice overs that will work much better in my final film and I am glad that I took the time out to re-record. However, due to the nature of the noises, I will have to add them as I go, as they are just general sounds. Doing it this way will allow me to choose the most appropriate sound for the mood of that shot, rather than having a pre-planned audio file.
Before I started to animate at the start of last week, James sent me the cave he had modeled a while ago to check that he was on the right lines and to see what I thought of his choice/ decisions.
James' cave
James' cave
James' cave
In terms of overall design, I am really happy with the look and style of the cave. I like the toon shader that James has applied and feel that it works really well as an initial/ base background, which I will be able to add a little more texture and depth to once we have the lighting and camera set up and ready to go.
However, this does not mean that the cave is perfect. At the moment the lighting isn't a little off and is too bright and lighting too much of the cave up whilst not creating enough shadow. I've spoken to James about this and he doesn't know how to change the light, as we have a very limited option of lights to use due to us using the toon shader and not having mental ray at our disposal.
We did try to adjust the colours, as I am not sure that I want the cave brown but more of a blue-y grey, however, we are still having issues with the lighting, despite James turning down the intensity and re-positioning the light.
Colour and lighting test
I feel that the colours are closer to what I want, however the lighting isn't doing it for me. It may be worth experimenting with making the cave brighter and adding in lighting in post, as well a little more texture to the cave walls.
This is something I will experiment with alongside James to come up with the best solution.
Last week, James sent me a screenshot of the cabin that he had been working on for a section of my animation. He'd decided to stick to quite a simple design using low poly shapes, but also tried to make the cabin look asymmetrical to aide in the result of an eerie atmosphere. I am really pleased with his design and feel that he has captured what I was looking for, with only a few minor tweaks being needed.
James' Cabin
From here James sent me the UV Maps to texture. I wasn't 100% certain how I wanted to texture the cabin, as I felt that drawing individual planks and then adding in detail would be a little too laborious and wouldn't necessarily work with the tone of the animation, unless I spent a while layering up the colours on each individual plank and so on.
With this in mind I began to think of environments within animations that reflected a similar environment/ colour range and texture pallet that I was aiming for and I came to The Boxtrolls. Even though this is a stop motion film, the texture of the set and the colour pallet used felt right for what I wanted to achieve, so I used this for inspiration and my colour pallet.
A set from The Boxtrolls
This led me to create a texture with a dry media brush in Photoshop and layer them up to create a dingy and grungy looking texture for my cabin.
Main cabin texture
Window texture
Overall, I am really pleased with my textures. All that is left is for James to test them on his cabin and for me to make any tweaks if needed.
With my animatic ready for the screening on Thursday, I decided that I would make a start on animating. I initially decided to start with a walk cycle and try to get as many done as possible, as I will be re-using the walk cycles throughout the animation and it would have meant a huge chunk of work completed and encouraged me to keep going. However, they were proving to be quite difficult, and as I haven't animated properly since last year I was getting really frustrated with it.
So I decided to move away from character animation and do some water animation. I've only ever done water animation once before and that was in my first year, so I decided to go back to the beginning and do my research again.
Elemental Magic: Volume II by Joseph Gilland has been a God send for my water animation and gave me all the information I needed in order to animate it. Overall, I am really pleased with my final outcome. I feel I have managed to create a very smooth and fluid (pun intended) motion.
Not only this, but the process didn't take me too long considering I was learning it as I went.
I then decided to add my character falling into the water, which I also feel went well and I am happy with the overall result. I'm pleased that the character fits well with the style of the water animation, as I was worried that the water would be slightly too realistic, however this isn't the case.
Before I started to animate, I realised that I would be needing to animate a walk cycle, which is something I have never actually done before surprisingly enough. So I thought it would be a good idea to get the good old Animator's Survival Kit from the shelf and attempt to animate my first ever walk cycle. As I've never done one before, I followed the book very closely and used the example model that the book uses just to test with.
I started off with the key frames and poses and I was pretty pleased with the overall outcome, however, I did feel that the walk would come out a little bouncy and as though the character was determined to get places.
Which I was right about. The overall walk isn't bad for a first attempt and I am confident that I know the key poses and how a walk cycle works, so I should be able to create a number of different walk cycles for my film. However, it may take me a little longer than other parts, as I will be learning as I go.
Now that I have got the majority of my pre-production sorted (other than the parts that I have collaborated on) I felt that it would be a good idea to review my Gantt Chart and see how much progress I had made and what I still needed to do to stay on top of things.
Time management for entire project
Once I'd marked off everything that was complete and saw what still needed doing, I realised that I was getting confused because there was so much to look at and I was struggling to focus on what I had done and what still needed completing.
Having said this however, I did notice that there were some gaps in my pre-production that needed seeing to. For instance, I have only managed to finalise my main character so far, as I've been struggling to design the other characters to match, so I have decided to reach out to Katy for help, which she has happily agreed to.
In terms of backgrounds, I need to speak to James and ask when he will be able to progress with them and give him a deadline to have them all complete by. I will also need to sit down with him and discuss colours and textures.
Branding is also something I need to focus on, as I have still yet to design a title for my animation and it would be nice to have my title sequence complete within the next couple of weeks.
With this in mind, I decided to make another chart that was simpler in order to give me a clearer picture on the progress I will be making in the next 8 weeks and to help me keep on track of everything.
Revised time sheet
This time sheet focuses purely on the basics that I need to make a start on or continue working, as I didn't want to clutter the page and become confused again. The intention is that I review my time sheet at the end of every week to see how much progress I've made and to see if I need to pick up the pace and to make sure that I am on track and not forgetting anything. I also have a day to day planner that I can refer to on a daily basis and set daily goals.
Hopefully this will help me to manage my time effectively, as this is something that I have always struggled with in past projects.
Last week I sat down with James to talk about the layout of the cave, as he wanted to start with this but was having trouble with figuring out how to model it and where the character would be based on my storyboard. In order to help him, I created a few quick sketches of the layout and where I wanted certain things to be.
James seemed to find these helpful and was happy to have a better idea of what I was looking for. We also used the time to discuss the aesthetic I wanted to go for. I knew that I didn't want it to look realistic, as I wanted it to work with my characters and fit with the overall mood of the film, so we decided on low poly with a toon texture on the top to flatten it out and add shading.
I'm looking forward to seeing what James will produce for me.
